


Winter's Dreams

by hellkitty



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Adaptations - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is sort of a mishmosh between Malory, Chretien and the movie Excalibur in terms of canonicity.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Winter's Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_magnificent_sheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_magnificent_sheep/gifts).



> This is sort of a mishmosh between Malory, Chretien and the movie Excalibur in terms of canonicity.

Solstice

“Tell me of your dream.”  Morgana’s voice was soft, suppliant. Many thought of her as cold, colder than the stone floor of the tower she kept for herself, but she’d always had that fond gentleness in her voice for Mordred.

Perhaps, Mordred thought, it was because they looked so much alike: the same frost-blue eyes, piercing and intense in the frame of glossy black hair. Hers was smooth as a raven’s wing, with only a few white hairs spangling it like stars, while Mordred’s fell in a loose cascade of curls over his shoulders.  “It was merely a dream,” he said with a careless shrug against the inlaid wood of the high seat behind him, snow melting from his boots onto the smoothed stones of the floor. 

Those blue eyes speared his, like a hawk diving down upon its prey. “Dreams are never ‘mere’ things, Mordred,” she said. “Not for such as you.”

He did love it when she talked that way about him, that he was special, destined for greater things than the common man. From his mother, he could shrug it off as a mother’s fond pride. But Morgana never flattered. So even now, as a man grown, he felt a little pleased glow in his heart at her words, and fought the desire to slip to the floor, as he’d done as a boy, and rest his head on her knee, smell the spicy, sweet smell of her gown as her small fingers combed his wayward curls.

But such things were not for knights pledged to their king, or men plagued with unsettling dreams. He was no child to beg comfort , not anymore. Though he knew if he asked, she’d grant it. She could withhold nothing from him, if he could shape it into words. It was part of the mysterious bond between them, like their uncanny eyes.

Mordred sat forward on the high-backed bench that kept the fire’s heat cozy around them, aware, as he’d become in these recent years, of how big his feet in their horsehide boots were compared to his mother’s sister’s dainty feet, in fur lined slippers of velvet and pearls. “A bear, just awaking from hibernation, fighting a badger,” he said.  The fire crackled between them, a log spitting into glowing embers.

“What more?”  Another woman might be embroidering, right now, or toying with her jeweled rings.  Morgana’s hands were folded on her lap, small and white and still. And he felt like a child before her, even now, antsy and unsettled before her serenity.

“Two ermine dashed between their feet, and the badger leapt for the throat of the bear.”

“Good,” she said, nodding, her blue optics never leaving his face. “And what?”

“The bear fell, the badger tearing his throat away, and the bear’s head flayed off, and from that,” he hesitated, half straining his memory, half because he didn’t like what he imagined this portended. He was no dream-reader, of all the skills his mother’s sister taught him. “From that wriggled a dragon, covered in blood that flew in a circle, crying out and spilling blood everywhere, until the whole field seemed under a rain.”  He slumped back, as if exhausted from the effort, studying Morgana’s face from under lidded eyes.

She was beautiful, still, in a place that aged and roughened women with the years.  But it seems the years had only sharpened to focus of her features, a stark beauty, like the cliffs of Tintagel below them. His own mother was pretty, still, in her own fashion, curvaceous and soft. As a child he’d once said she’d been made of pillows, and Morgana made of stone.

He’d learned by now that his childish tongue had spoken truth. But even stone can warm, and even pillows can be made of strong, enduring stuff. In the company of women, he’d always felt safe, even as a stripling, when the rumors of brigands in the Marches quivered through the land like shy deer.

Even through the storms of court, the intrigue of high places, he felt insulated, secure, as though his mother and her sister were sturdy sea vessels that kept him from drowning under the rip currents of ill words and rumors.

The silence stretched too long for his enduring. “I am not gifted with dream sight,” he said, bowing his head in apology, black curls falling over his brow. He never had been one with that skill, or illusion. To him, things were always as they were, what they were. He lacked Morgana’s ability to look at things sidewards, to see behind the surface to some interwoven substance as though peering at the back of a tapestry.

“You see truly, what you do see,” Morgana responded. She reached over taking one of his hands, turning it palm-upright. Her other hand, with its birdlike nails, stroked over the creases of his palm, scrying there as was her gift.

She had many gifts, Morgana, the child of fairies, and rumor held that she went abroad on the nights where even the moon hid itself, and consorted with the Wild Hunt.  Mordred had tried to follow her once or twice, as a boy, waiting in the narrow portcullis for her to leave but he’d always found himself sleeping soundly as stone, when the kitchenmaid passed by to feed the chickens.

And once on his admission to Arthur’s court, he’d drawn his sword on a another knight who’d dared hint that old tale and that she did more with the Hunt than tell tales, his eyes as blue and bleak as the winter sky holding the other man’s until he stammered an apology. Because he’d learned by then what they meant by the slander: that she spread her thighs to unseelie things, that she bore them fairy children, monsters and chimeras.

He could see the frown that she quickly smoothed away—not out of vanity, for Morgana wasn’t vain, but to banish the emotion behind it by erasing the trace of it. “Dreams,” she said, in that tone that he knew meant she was instructing him in something she wanted him to remember, word for word, “are snatches of the future, like handholds on the cliffs. They merely offer shapes around which the clever climber can pull himself upward.”

“And what use is this?”

“The bear,” she said, “is Arthur, the king.” She always spoke of him that way, despite the blood relation.

“And the badger?” 

“Is yet to be seen,” she said, her white brow clouding. Her hand rested in his, almost like a sister’s.  “All that is needed is to know that destiny will flash her white tail before us again, when the time is right.”

Mordred tried to take comfort in that, but something in her words seemed the cry of a cormorant far from home.

 

 

 Winter’s Boon

“I pay no heed to dreams,” Arthur said, raising the drinking horn. “Who needs the counsel of dreams when I have the wisdom of the best knights in the world?”

A round of cheers from the long trestle tables, raucous and slightly drunk, the faces warm and shining from the feast.  This was a rare moment of peace, a rare night he could put aside the burdens of the crown and enjoy the benefits.

It was a glittering display, too, with the sharp note of pine over the smell of roasting meat and the healthy smell of knights. Torchlight danced off their golden torques, the few flecks of silver in their hair: Lancelot, Gaheris, Percival. Even Gawain, his hair, as ruddy as the chestnut destrier he rode, had its share of silver strands.  Age, but that ripe age, where wisdom vied with strength. 

“And of course,” he said, turning to bow to Guenevere, next to him on the dais’s high table. Even Guenevere, though she’d lost the dew-fresh plump of youth, had thinned, the years burnishing her features to a higher gloss, mellowing the curves of her body to the sinuous lines of a riverbank. “The most gracious counsel of our most beautiful Queen.” 

She ducked her head, becomingly, one delicate, ringed hand covering her face, as though, even after all these years, the attention of men overwhelmed her. It was still charming, would always be charming, the way her green eyes caught the spark of the light, as though holding the soul of flame itself, the light echoing softly off the pearls on her wimple, down the garnet nap of her gown.

“And if the Queen, most gracious,” Merlin said, rising from his perch in the corner, his beard a field of snow as though the winter had come inside, “were to advise you on the matter of dreams?” 

Arthur looked around, the room’s bustle receding into a hush of challenge. He smiled, raising his drinking horn again. “Then I would have no choice but to heed her, as any loyal knight must.”

“I find,” Guenevere said, after a long pause, twisting one of the gold rings on her fingers, “that the waking world has mystery and counsel enough for me.”

Merlin’s expression was hidden, as a wood under snowfall, under his beard, as he bowed his head in acknowledgement, and something like defeat.

“However,” Gawain spoke up, rising. “It is the hour for entertainments, and I think we’d find diversion in a tale-telling. So why not tell us of this dream, my liege?”

One last quaff of his horn, before handing it back to a page. “Very well, for my cousin, the honorable May Hawk.”   Gawain was quick, like his sobriquet, sharp-eyed and never fully tamed. But a loyal kinsman, contented with his place and power.  A treasure, Arthur thought, as he stepped down the dais, to the well between the trestles, near the fire trench, where minstrels or the rare trouvere all the way from the Norman lands would sit.

“I dreamed,” he said, pitching his voice into the singsongy lilt of one of the Irish bards.  A ripple of laughter, over Merlin’s frown. Merlin always put too much weight in words; held that the Irish singers could curse or bless with their songs. Folly, and against the teachings of the Christ.  Just as this interpretation of dreams.

But the world needed a little folly, especially in the dead times of winter, and surely this infant Christ would appreciate a story.

“I dreamed of a pair of stoats, winter white, frolicking in a hallway, chasing each other, in the delight of games.  They raced into the chapel, like the one here, with high, thin windows, and I could smell, in this dream I dreamed, a sort of holy scent, myrrh or some exotic spice, and I knew, in the way of dreams, that moments ago, this chapel had been full, filled with great knights taking solemn vows, pledging themselves to a grand mission.”  He looked up, heady from the mead he’d drunk, to see the circle of faces, some earnest and half-worried with believing, some with a mere child’s delight at a story of wonders.

He looked up toward the dais, where Guenevere seemed to shiver, and Lancelot, in blues and silver, like the lake from which he took his name, stepped up, to wrap her in an ermine cloak. She offered Arthur an encouraging smile, and he wished, not for the first time, the dais weren’t so far away from the firepit. He forgot, in the business of the year, to have that alteration made. At least, for tomorrow, on the twelfth night, he could have a brazier there for the Queen’s comfort.

Arthur could feel the others waiting, anticipating, and he realized he hadn’t finished his dream.  “It must have been a grand venture,” he said, “for the place felt bereft of greatness for their absence.” He felt eloquent, letting himself play with the words the way he imagined a true poet might. He was no poet, though he tried, as he tried to be a lover to his Queen, knowing his ways were rough.

“And the stoats, in their winter cloaks, dashed upon the altar, gamboling over the embroidered cloth, and upset the chalice. Which spilled out, upon them, drenching them both with blood.” 

A cry, as if of pain, and he looked up to see Guenevere, white as a seal, her thin hands pressed together over her mouth.

“Perhaps,” Lancelot said, leaning over her solicitously, letting her tangle her slim fingers in his own, “such fare is indelicate for our Queen and lady.”

“No, no,” Guenevere said, rising, one hand clutching the carven chair. “Though it is true, I am not one for this world of violence. It is merely the closeness of the room and too much wine.” She smiled, weakly. 

“Accompany her,” Arthur said, nodding at Lancelot, who already had his hands supporting the Queen’s delicate waist and hands, before he turned to the crowd. “It seems,” he said, forcing the joke, “that the dreams of kings are overmuch.”

A laugh through the crowd, the sound of people not really amused, but struggling to find a purchase on some slippery surface.  Gawain stepped forward, holding out a hand. “Perhaps I should take over the entertainments.” He turned to the assembled knights, with an impish grin. “I have heard a new fabliau from our southern neighbors.”

Arthur stepped back, moving again to the dais, now empty. The glitter seemed to have gone off the evening, and the knights and ladies now seemed less friends than an uncertain tide that no man could control, however benignly. Still, they turned to Gawain, whose ready smile and capers pulled their own smiles and laughs, readily enough, willing themselves to be entertained, while Arthur slumped on his carven throne, weighted anew by his dream.

All eyes were on Gawain, as he told his wild tale. All eyes except the pale-frost eyes of Mordred, on a far corner of the trestle, looking at him with the clear intensity of a badger, as though seeing the white flash of a deer's fleeing tail.


End file.
